What ࠨ means
It marks an initial i vowel before the first consonant.
The Samaritan initial i uses a spacing form: ࠨ occupies its own character position. The related combining mark attaches to a consonant, so it cannot fill this word-initial position.
Samaritan writing developed from older Hebrew script
The Samaritan script grew out of an older form of Hebrew writing; it was not invented all at once. A related Hebrew-script form appears in Samaritan circles around the second century BCE, and distinct Samaritan letter shapes had emerged by the Byzantine period. Samaritan letters are historically related to Old Hebrew. The square Hebrew alphabet followed a different branch shaped by Aramaic.
ࠨ’s job is orthographic: it gives an initial vowel a place when there is no preceding consonant for a combining mark to attach to. Samaritan writing served chiefly for sacred texts. In the 10th/11th century, Arabic joined Samaritan Hebrew and Aramaic in manuscripts, and using Samaritan letters could mark a passage as especially sacred.
This is an orthographic character of Samaritan writing, a script closely tied to sacred texts.
Use the spacing form at a word’s start; the combining i mark belongs on a consonant.
Part of the collection
Who writes ࠨ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ࠨ look different in another font?
Yes, fonts can draw Samaritan letters with different outlines and spacing; that visual change alone does not alter which Unicode character is encoded.
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How to type or find ࠨ
- Search it as
- Samaritan vowel · initial i vowel · Samaritan combining mark · Samaritan script history · Samaritan keyboard
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ࠨ\0828Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.